Cyclowiz Review

Written by Brakken
February 2007

Introduction

The Cyclowiz is the second Nintendo Wii modchip to hit the market. It’s basically has the same functionality as the first one to come out, but is produced using better components and features the ability to be directly soldered onto the Nintendo Wii’s Hybrid DVD-ROM drive’s Serial Port. By installing this modchip you will be able to boot backup discs of Nintendo Wii games and backups/homebrew Nintendo GameCube games, applications and emulators.

Are you new to the modchip scene? Want to know how they work and what their purpose is? Then if you haven’t read the first part of the “other” Nintendo Wii modchip I reviewed (the first one to be released) click here. If you’ve already read it then there is no point in reading it twice.

Oh, and I'd like to thanks Mod-Chip.com for sending me the samples for review. Not only do they always order enough stock to fill customers orders they feature really fast, great service and ship your orders to you really quickly. That's just not a sales pitch as they are on of the best resources for modification chips on Earth - sadly, they don't have a huge selection of products to choose from.

Features

Quicksolder (no wires required)
Plays Wii Backups
Plays GC Backups
Play GC Homebrew
Play GC Imports (swap needed)
Built-in Audio Fix
DVD-R / DVD+R support
Optional chip disable wire
Stealth even when chip is enabled
Multi-purpose LED
Upgradeable via DVD-R

Contents

Simply put, all you get is the Cyclowiz modchip itself – nothing more, nothing less. It comes inside a small ESD bag. The chip itself is pretty small and looks professionally made. Not that the way to chip looks means anything as once it’s installed you’ve never see it again unless you go to remove it. Although you won’t be looking at the chip, it is made with professional quality components. The only negative aspect I see in it’s design is the fact it’s PCB is quite skinny, which means if you Quicksolder it in and go to remove it you will have more of a chance of breaking it.

Installation

Installing the Cyclowiz is a pretty simple process, but requires you to have average soldering skills. You’ll be taking apart your Nintendo Wii and digging in it for it’s DVD-ROM drive in which the serial port you’ll be soldering the Cyclowiz onto is located. Luckily, I’ve written a really cool guide with lots of pictures explaining how to disassemble your Nintendo Wii which can be located here.

Once you’ve got the drive out of the Wii you need to place the Cyclowiz over the solder points outlined in their installation manual. Strangely, the Cyclowiz doesn’t line up exactly right with all of the points as there is a small gap between the smaller solder points so I would suggest lining it up with the top two and then either using a small piece of wire to connect it to the 3rd point or just use a big blob of solder. Note though; if you use a big blob of solder you risk shorting out the chip so make sure it doesn’t touch anything else.

Also, before you actually solder the Cyclowiz onto the serial port I would suggest covering the solder points on both the chip and the serial port with Flux as this will help the solder bond easier. Once you’ve applied the flux and placed the chip in it’s respective location hold your solder over one of the large soldering points (holes) and touch your soldering iron to the solder. This will secure your chip in place and then you can proceed to solder the rest of the points on.

Once this is done there are some optional points you can connect to extend the functionality of the chip. One wire can be run to the reset button of the Wii, which will disable it when turned on using that button. The other 3 wires can be used in combination with a switch to enable its “update by DVD-R” mode. Due to the fact I was in a hurry and there are no updates out there I decided not to use solder the wires and install the switch for the extra functionality.

There is a LED on the chip that will light up if you’ve installed it correctly, but you can only see it if you leave your Wii open, connect the DVD-ROM drive to it and power it on. I guess this could be handy if you are new at soldering and aren’t sure you did a good job, but if you’re experienced I see little to no point in testing it via this method. So I just put the Wii back together was confident it would work.

Usage

The first thing to do was to make sure the Nintendo Wii was still working. So I put in an original game and it loaded fine. Next was to check and see if it could boot burnt discs so I tried out a copy of the self booting homebrew edition of SDLoad and then backups on both DVD-R and DVD+R. Everything worked out well.

Next I wanted to address the game compatibility rumors floating around the Internet. Rumor has it that some games have choppy video, slow loading times or don’t load at all. So I sought out an experienced modchip developer and GameCube coder (whom wishes to stay anonymous) and he had me do a simple test – listen to the disc spin!

It’s simple; I put in an original disc and listened to it spin up to 6x (the speed the Wii reads at) and then put in a backup and it indeed spin slower. It seems there is an issue with both the v1 and v2 Cyclowiz chips that don’t tell the DVD-ROM to spin up to 6x. Because of this issue games display choppy video sequences, take longer to load and some “time out” while loading and then don’t even work! I’d have to say this is a major drawback, but fortunately only affects around 4-5 games (so far).

Homebrew

Next it was time to test out homebrew loading via the various methods which are creating a bootable disc, SDLoad and GCOS. All three methods successfully booted the various homebrew applications and emulators I threw at it.

One cool thing that happened when using the emulators is that they would let you load the ROM image(s) you have via DVD. To do this you must burn the emulator along with the ROM(s) on the same disc and boot it using one of the three methods as you can’t change discs after the emulator boots (this function is broken due to the difference in drives from the GameCube to the Wii). Below is a chart of the emulators and the tests I ran them through.

  
  

Emulator Version SDLoad GCOS Boot Disc DVD Loading SD Card Loading Work Fine? FCEUGC v1.0.8x Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Genesis Plus 101406 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Hu-Go v0.0.1 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes NeoPop Internal Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes SNES9X-GX Internal Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

MFE or Mplayer Front End also worked just fine. This powerful homebrew application will let you listen to or watch almost every format of multimedia files out there including Divx, AVI, Xvid, MPEG1, MPEG2, VOB (DVD), MP3, OGG, etc… What was even more impressive is I found out a way to load more then 1.4GB of data from the DVDs I burnt. As MFE was originally created for the GameCube it had a limitation of how much data it could load, but I managed to find a way around that limitation. For instructions on how to bypass this click here.

As per the first modchip to come out the networking capabilities of GameCube homebrew are broken so there is no way to stream games, run Linux or send over DOL files. I tried using the Wifi connection and a USB -> Ethernet adapter with no luck. Developers told me that the homebrew programs would have to be updated to support the Nintendo Wii’s new network adapter.

Version 1 vs. Version 2 & Faulty Chips

The first version of the Cyclowiz to come out didn’t support the not-so-rare D2B DVD-ROM drives microchip. This is because it’s a new chip that comes with Nintendo Wii consoles produced after January 2007. Luckily, if you happen to have a v1 chip and a D2B Nintendo Wii the Cyclowiz Team will exchange it for free. You can tell if you have a v2 chip by looking at the plastic bag it comes in. If it has a logo printed on the bag then you have a v2.

Due to the factory that produces the Cyclowiz chips making a mistake a rather large shipment of them have some of their solder points bridged together. If you go to install a bridged chip you could possibly damage the chip or your Nintendo Wii. The Cyclowiz Team will also replace these screwed up chips for free, but there is an easy fix. Simply use a razor blade and scrape between the bridged points to make sure they are not touching each other anymore.

Conclusion

I’m impressed by the chips ability to utilize the DVD-ROM drive in the emulators, but other then that I’d say it was a rush-rush job as there are un-working features, the entire slowdown issue and faulty chips floating about. Sure, it looks good from the outside, but inside it lies some messed up code. Still, it’s not bad for a first generation chip. It does (for the majority of the time) what’s it’s advertised to do, is easy to install and of course can be upgraded which in itself is a major bonus. Hopefully, by the time you’ve read this review they have fixed the slowdown issue with an upgrade. All in all it’s not a bad product.

Negatives

Backup Slowdown/Compatibility Issues
Moderate Soldering Skills Required to Remove it
Doesn't Come with the Required Toggle Switch

Positives

Ease of Operation
Simple Two Minute Solder Install
Upgrade Feature (Not Tested Yet)
Professional Design You'll Never See Again Once Installed

Links

Team Cyclops - The Creators of the Cyclowiz
Mod-Chip.com - Worldwide Reseller

-=[ Cyclowiz Review Discussion Thread ]=-

Product(s) were received from the website above. ISO-420 will always link back to whomever sent the product(s) *respect*, but please remember that the reviews are independently written by our staff and are not subject to alteration by whomever supplies us with the review product(s).

Revision 1 - Removed PAL not working on NTSC as it does. It just didn't work with my setup, but I have confirmed it to be working with other reliable sources.